Hesitation Prevails — I Saved Over 50%

Seems like I just keep going back to talking about our trip to Florida over the weekend.

Well, here I go again…

While down there, we visited a couple of shopping malls. One of the stores my wife and I ventured into was Urban Outfitters.

I used to get their catalog around five or six years ago (when I was still their target audience), and I’m pretty certain that I’ve been in their Toronto store a time or two, but I’ve never actually bought anything.

It’s a little too “cheap” (but expensive) and trendy for me.

But while in the store, I came across a belt that I kinda liked. It’s got the Canadian flag on it.

Not really my style — I’m not “metro” enough to ever wear a white belt, let alone a red one… But I still liked it.

Even went back to look at it twice — a rare occurrence. Must’ve been the flag.

But the price was too high.

$38 for a belt?

Not in my wardrobe.

Needless to say, we left the store empty handed.

Now, I usually buy a belt once every decade and usually it’s from a discount store like T.J. Maxx or Marshall’s. The belt of my 20′s was brown. The belt of my 30′s is black. Together, I’m pretty much covered for any and every outfit.

List price on each of them was probably $59 or so, but chances are, I only paid maybe $12.99.

Thirty-eight dollars, on the other hand, is too much to spend on a belt. Way too much. Especially one that I might be embarrassed to actually wear.

But this morning, while getting dressed for work and looking for my usual belt (still attached to yesterday’s pants), the Canada belt crossed my mind again.

Still pant-less (too much info, I know), I hopped on the computer and did a search.

No luck. Lots of honky looking belt buckles with maple leafs, but not the belt that I was looking for. Even eBay let me down… How often can you say that?

Then I went right to the source, UrbanOutfitters.com, and there it was.

On sale…

For $14.99!

Sold.

But I do have to moan about the additional $6 shipping charge… Sheesh…

Oh, and who on earth pays $36 for a threadbare t-shirt?

I mean, really…

How does this place stay in business?

Posted on October 17th, 2008 at 7:07 pm by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Life | No Comments »

First Imaginary Car Payment Made

It was actually late last week that I made my first “fake” car payment, but now I’ve set things up so that on the 15th of each month, I’ll be auto-depositing $400 into my new ING account labeled “Auto”.

So far, I’ve earned 3 cents interest.

Wow!

Exciting stuff!

I’m on my way…

But multiplying a $400 payment by 12 only adds up to $4800/year.

It’s funny how a monthly payment of $400 feels like a lot to come up with, but $4800 over the span of a year doesn’t feel like very much at all.

They’re exactly the same, but they certainly don’t seem that way. To me.

And considering that a typical 4-door car considered inexpensive still costs between $15-$20k, it would take me 3-4 years to finance a future car purchase myself.

I can imagine my current car lasting another 3-4 years, but I’m not going to count on it either. You never know when it’s going to decide to stop running…

And that has me thinking… Should I increase the fake car payment?

Or, maybe, since it will take my 3-4 years to save up for my next car, what’s the difference in just financing much of it like I have in the past?

Either way, both scenarios come attached with 3-4 years worth of monthly payments…

Hmm…

Posted on October 16th, 2008 at 7:34 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance | 5 Comments »

Economy Hitting Main Street? I Don’t Think So. And Here’s Why…

While we were down in Florida last weekend, as I mentioned yesterday, we visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

I lamented about how much of a rip-off admission was — $75 per person plus tax. I didn’t even bother to mention the cost of food, but it wasn’t cheap either.

Though there were only two of us, the day cost over $200 total. We didn’t come home with any sort of souvenir either. Not even a novelty cup. That’s an expensive day — I don’t care how much money you make.

Now, I say that the economy isn’t affecting Main Street one bit because we weren’t alone at the park. Tens of thousands of people were there with us — at $75 each.

Hardly a crowd of elites either — fact is, regular people out there are still willing and able to drop a few hundred dollars to go to a terrible zoo, slow economy or not.

But it wasn’t only our trip to Disney.

We also attended an NHL and NFL game in Tampa Bay.

Tickets to those events are NOT cheap.

Neither are the concessions.

Or the souvenirs.

Or the parking.

But you know what? Both the St. Pete Times Forum and Raymond James Stadium were filled to capacity. FILLED. A majority of fans were double-fisting a pair of $6.25 beverages too.

Tickets for those two events were also around $75 each — for the cheap seats where we sat. See the photos? That was my vantage point.

So, again, there were tens of thousands of regular Joe’s (not excluding Joe the Plumber or Joe Six-Pack) that were able to drop well over $100 per person purely for entertainment purposes.

Just across town, the Tampa Bay Rays were playing the Boston Red Sox at Tropicana Field.

You guessed it, also sold out.

And I’m pretty certain that those ticket prices were considerably higher than $75/seat.

Just something to think about the next time you hear a politician attempting to connect Wall Street to Main Street.

From my recent experiences, an awful lot of disposable income is still out there… The masses aren’t suffering.

Posted on October 16th, 2008 at 12:28 pm by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Rants, Vacation | 2 Comments »

Photo of the Week: Even the Gorilla was Unimpressed

Last Friday, while in Florida, I visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom. You know, the fourth big attraction on the Disney property after the Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center, and MGM Studios.

The admission for me and my wife was $159.76. No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of money.

And for that kind of money, I expect some top notch entertainment.

I didn’t find it.

In fact, the “adventure” was soured even before we entered the park…

See, the person we purchased the admission from was very pushy with the up-sell.

“Well, a ‘Park Hopper’ pass will allow you to go to a different park within the Disney resort.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that. I just want two adult tickets for Animal Kingdom, thanks.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a multi-day pass? They’re valid indefinitely and,” blah, blah, blah…

I said, “No. Just one day, one park, thanks.”

She went on and on and on — holding on to my credit card and passes so I couldn’t just walk away from the pitch.

“Where y’all from,” she said.

Odd that she worded it that way — her name tag said she was from Syosset, New York. I’ve never in my life heard a Long Islander use the term “y’all”.

“Connecticut,” I responded impatiently…

Then, as if Connecticut was local (a mere 1200 miles away), she suggested a year-long pass…

Sigh… “Two adults. One day. One park. Thanks.”

I’ve always found it funny that their tickets are valid for so long, but they’re still just a flimsy piece of cardboard. I actually have 1 day remaining on one of those “passes” from 1997, but the cardboard has all but disintegrated in my wallet since then…

Even up here, a season pass for Six Flags comes on a laminated plastic credit card type of thing — they even put your picture on it. At Disney, it’s cardboard. Go figure.

Anyway, the experience of purchasing tickets was invasive and uncomfortable. She was just prying for an opening to toss another sales pitch my way. What, am I buying a car here? Certainly not very Disney-esque…

Then, as I’m sure many of you know, you get your finger scanned as you enter the park — otherwise the turnstile won’t turn. What is up with that?

Every time I go to Disney, about once every 5 years, I conveniently forget about that, as I’m sure most other visitors do too.

But I’m sorry, they’ve got my credit card number, my address, my signature, and my finger print.

That’s the exact same amount of information I provided to get my green card.

Think about that.

It’s a freakin’ theme park?! Disney has more of my information than the Department of Homeland Security.

What does Disney need all that for? Imagine what they use it for?

Considering how many people claim to be worried about identity theft or big brother watching over you, well, I’m surprised so many people continue to visit the Disney parks.

The TSA doesn’t even take a finger print at the airport?!

Anyway, once inside the park, it screams Disney. Other than the overpriced knick-knacks, that’s a good thing.

Great landscaping, it’s nice and clean, and it looks and feels like you’re guaranteed to have a wonderfully memorable day.

Then you notice that there aren’t any animals. Anywhere.

This is “Animal Kingdom”, right?

I see a big concrete tree. Oh, and a fake concrete mountain off in the distance too…

Oh! There’s the ever elusive Mallard duck. Finally, some wildlife!

But we have those in Connecticut. You don’t even have to pay to see them.

So we immediately head over to the safari ride. Rafiki’s Rover or some such silly name.

They have this thing now where you can get a “Fast Pass” by swiping your ticket in a machine. It’ll spit out a time later in the day when you can come back. The idea is that you won’t have to spend the day standing in line.

So I walk up to a vacant machine and stick my ticket in. It spits it back out.

Nothing.

I tried my wife’s ticket. The machine spits it out too.

Seeing that I’m having trouble, and I’m not alone, a Disney employee tries again for me — like maybe I’m a moron and I’m putting the ticket in upside down or something.

Same problem for her. This is what she says:

“Yeah, did you have this in your wallet? Sometimes that can mess up the mag-strip so the machines can’t read them…”

Are you kidding me?

Where was I supposed to put my cardboard tickets that are apparently valid until the end of time? The woman I purchased it from made it out as if it was one of the most valuable things on earth — I put it in my wallet for safekeeping.

What if I had run through the mist machines a few times on the way here? Or gone on the water ride? I’m pretty certain the ticket wouldn’t have survived anywhere but in my wallet. I couldn’t believe it.

And by the looks of those around me, most people were keeping their tickets in their purse or wallet. Um, Disney? You might want to make a design change…

After three or four tries on each ticket/card, it eventually worked. We were to come back in about 3 hours. Fair enough.

We walked around some more and eventually stumbled across a few tigers (sleeping, of course) and the obviously bored gorilla pictured above.

Okay, those are two pretty impressive animals to have in the collection, but you can see those at nearly every metropolitan zoo in the country — usually for admission of around $20 (or FREE in Chicago!).

For more than three times that amount, I want to see something, well, let’s just say that if I’d gotten to see a polar bear fight a gorilla, I’d say that I got my money’s worth.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

They didn’t even have a polar bear.

Somehow three hours pass — mostly just walking around nicely landscaped swamplands looking at birds just like the birds that lined the highway on the way there. Seriously, those stork looking things look pretty much the same when you speed by them at 70 mph.

We head back to the Safari ride and, well, stand in line.

So much for a “fast” pass.

Seems everyone uses the fast pass so the line at 3 o’clock is the exact same line that would have been there at noon. I’m not sure the whole idea is working as planned.

So we drive out into the “wilderness” (I use the term loosely) with an over enthusiastic Disney employee having a pretend conversation with a recording blabbing about poachers in the area or something.

I’m not knocking it, I mean, I realize they’re trying to add a little excitement to a rather boring truck ride, but sometimes I wish they’d tone down the Disney-ness of things.

The concrete ostrich eggs left out in the open didn’t need to be displayed…

Or the showcasing of the “upside down” tree that apparently took 2000 years to grow — again, obviously made of concrete and fiberglass.

And how about those phony termite hills?

On the ride, we saw some alligators (also available on the side of the highway in much of Florida), some giant horned gazelle things, a giraffe, a couple of different kinds of rhinos, and some elephants.

No doubt, some pretty decent stuff. But we waited three hours for that?

At a traditional zoo, again, with an admission 3-times less, we could have seen all of those things in the first hour?!

In the end, I felt ripped off.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando can’t compare to any of the zoo’s I’ve been to in the past few years.

The Bronx Zoo has more gorillas. The Brookfield Zoo has more tigers. The Toronto Zoo has orangutans and gorillas. The Lincoln Park Zoo has FREE admission (and more animals). The Pittsburgh Zoo has more stuff for kids to do.

The only thing Animal Kingdom had was more employees and a HUGE fake tree. Oh, and a pushy sales pitch.

So *NOT* worth a $75 admission fee.

Posted on October 15th, 2008 at 5:31 pm by Brainy Smurf
Photo, Rants, Vacation | 2 Comments »

Enjoy the Silence… on a Plane?

So we flew down to Florida on Friday morning. Not really much to report about the flight, but the one thing that I did notice, likely due to the price of oil (which oddly enough is really low right now), was that the plane was really full.

Better yet, before take off, our plane didn’t need to wait in any sort of line. We even took off on time!

And further, we landed 10 minutes early!

Hmmmm… Maybe the FAA will figure out that taking a bunch of planes out of the sky improves the entire system?

The one other thing I wanted to mention was the background music on the plane. Yes, background music piped in through the plane’s speakers.

I don’t ever recall background music on a plane, though, I must admit that I don’t fly much.

It was only playing when we were on the ground and it was only a loop of two songs.

Both had a very smooth jazzy sound with a female vocalist. Light stuff, really, until you listened to the lyrics…

It was Depeche Mode and New Order…

“Enjoy the Silence” and “Blue Monday”, respectively…

Yeah, two new wave euro-techno synthesizer bands from the 1980′s.

I don’t know, from being covered semi-recently by a band named “Orgy” to being the “elevator” music on an airplane…

Wow… Never saw that coming…

Posted on October 12th, 2008 at 8:37 am by Brainy Smurf
Vacation | 4 Comments »

Save Over $900 by Switching Cell Phone Plans

If you have a cell phone, and you’re not the type to have it surgically implanted to the side of your head, chances are, you’re paying too much.

I’ve been with Virgin Wireless for just over a year now. The service has yet to fail me and I’ve covered a lot of ground over the past few months. Who needs “the network”, right?

The best feature though has been that, over the entire year, my cell phone bill has been $84.80.

Total.

Some out there, I’m sure, pay that much for just one month of service. For me, it’s a year. Think about the savings.

A thousand dollars? Or eighty-four bucks? Hmmmmm…

I know which route I’d take.

Actually, I already took it.

And look what happened to my consumer debt as a result…

Coincidence?

I think not.

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Posted on October 9th, 2008 at 5:54 am by Brainy Smurf
Cell Phone, Cutting Costs | 2 Comments »

Okay, a Little More on this Economic Mess…

Watching the presidential debate last night, responding to a question regarding the current economic situation, Barack Obama mentioned something about businesses not being able to make payroll because they aren’t able to borrow money.

I don’t know, where I come from, if you need to borrow money to pay your employees, well, you’re not running a very successful business.

It’s as simple as that.

Even in a booming economy, a business like that certainly can’t be classified as profitable.

Earlier, on the nightly news, they highlighted a “small-business” owner in Florida. Apparently, due to the credit crunch, he’s having to close his 13 tile and carpet stores and lay off 40 employees.

Fair enough, but do you think he’d be fine if, say, he’d only opened 5 stores to begin with? You know, and operate within his means?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. It’s just like the folks that bought more house than they can afford.

They gambled and lost.

It happens.

Taking a risk or a leap of faith isn’t, well, it isn’t risk-free.

Hopefully the business owners out there who never overextended themselves will thrive in this “new” economy and find the fortune they’ve deserved all along.

And seriously, would it kill either candidate to actually answer a freakin’ question?

I was turned off by both…

Posted on October 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Finance, Success | No Comments »

Opening Another ING Savings Account

The way ING does things is a little wonky. They make it seem like it’s so easy to open multiple savings jars under one account, but I know I’m not the first to find their way of doing it a little bit confusing.

I don’t know — clicking on a link titled “Open an Account” indicates to me that I’ll be getting a new account number, login, and password. That’s a lot of hassle. Maybe that’s just me?

But when you click on that link, that isn’t what happens. You keep your current account number, login, and password — they just add a new “bucket” to add funds to.

Perfect — exactly what I was looking for.

So why am I doing this?

Well, I want to keep some of my savings off to the side.

Since I finished paying off the auto loan last month, this will be my first month in over 11 years that I won’t have to pay a car bill of any sort.

The thing is, I’ve grown accustomed to paying that monthly bill. It’s just part of the budget, you know?

After so long, I barely even notice the money missing each month, so I’m going to keep paying it — to this separate savings account.

The original Volkswagen minimum payment was $224. The original BMW minimum payment was $689 — that makes my head hurt. And the original minimum payment on the Scion was $289.

Averaged together, the monthly bill was/is $400. And that’s what I’m going to set aside each month — but not yet…

I can’t afford it!

Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 7:51 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Savings | 3 Comments »

Photo of the Week: Changing Styles

Yesterday, while at the second hockey game of the season, I decided to purchase some fan gear…

Twenty-two dollars later, I was the proud owner of this hat. It’s the most bizarre shade of yellow. Ugly, even.

While I could go on and on about how odd the colour is, the actual purchase process is what I want to talk about.

See, I picked it off the rack and took it to the counter. Swiped my credit card, and then the saleswoman asked if I’d like a bag.

“Nope, I think I’ll wear it…”

She proceeded to remove and discard the cardboard insert (that kept it upright on the shelf) and then went to cut the tag off. Nothing too crazy, right?

Then she stopped and looked at me — sizing me up, I’d assume — and asked if she should leave the size sticker on.

“Excuse me?”, I said in total confusement.

“Do you want me to leave the sticker on?”

Not really picking up on what she was talking about, sometimes I’m slow when faced with questions out of the blue, I stammered out a, “Um, yeah, sure…”

Then when she handed me the hat, I peeled the sticker off and put it in my pocket. (Yes, the photo above is a re-enactment of the actual event…) She kinda gave me a “whatever” kind of look as I pulled it on to my “medium” head.

As I walked back to my seat, and my wife gave me a disapproving smile (the yellow totally clashes with my skin tone), I contemplated what had just occurred…

What was up with that line of questioning? And that weird look she gave me? And then it hit me…

See, when I was in university, that fad of leaving the tag on a baseball cap started to gain momentum. I never took part — I mean, what better way to get stopped for shoplifting that wearing your clothes with the tags still attached?

Not only that, it looked ridiculous. No one in my clique ever did it. Thinking about it, no one ever would.

Nowadays, it seems that look has faded, which is probably why the saleswoman so abruptly and instinctively cut the tag off for me. The college-age kids she deals with day-in and day-out don’t sport that look anymore.

But the “look” that has replaced it, I’ve noticed, is to keep the sticker on the brim — usually a perfectly flat brim. You’ve seem them — young kids at the mall with the big round gold sticker either under the brim or on it…

Yeah, don’t ask — I’m too old to understand it, but fashion conscious enough to notice it.

Again, it looks stupid to me.

I mean, why would you do that? Does everyone need to know that the hat is officially licensed merchandise? Or, worse yet, that I have a size medium head? Does anyone even care?

What’s next? Are we going to start leaving the sticker on the leg of the jeans too? Yeah, that’s right, look at that, I’ve got a 34-inch waist. You like that? Yeah?

Too bad — I just peeled that sticker off of four new pairs of jeans…

Posted on October 5th, 2008 at 7:29 pm by Brainy Smurf
Life, Photo | 1 Comment »

Are Home Values Important to the Economy?

I wish someone could adequately explain to me why “home prices continuing to fall” is a bad thing?

I must be missing something — it’s something mentioned in every single article about the economy.

I’d say with confidence that a great deal of the population is not in the market of buying and selling homes on a regular basis — so, really, what does the value of your home matter for, well, this HUGE slice of the population?

Nothing as far as I can tell. It’s just an asset on paper — it’s not like it “feeds” the economy.

From that smaller slice of the population, let’s say half are in the market to buy a house and half are in the market to sell a house.

For that first group, the buyers, the decreasing value of homes is a godsend. I mean, homes are on sale. Not for sale, but on sale.

If the trend continues, they may even fall to the clearance rack.

That is good news for buyers. While I wouldn’t complain for a second about the price that I paid for my house in 2002, I certainly wouldn’t have minded if it had been, well, in the bargain bin.

For the sellers out there, well, it’s not such a great time. If they purchased their home within the past 2-3 years, well, chances are, they can’t get what they paid for it. That sucks.

But guess what? For nearly everything I’ve bought in my life, if I were to sell it now, I’d take a loss. That’s the way things go…

I once paid too much for a Furby one Christmas. Don’t laugh. Sure, it’s a smaller scale, but percentage wise, I overpaid by well over 400%. Maybe even 500%.

That’s HUGE!

I don’t know of anyone’s home that has gone down anywhere near that much. I also don’t know anyone that has overpaid by that much.

Yeah, I might get ripped off by a couple hundred percent on a must-have toy during the holidays, but I’m pretty sure that none of the homebuyers in the recent past have been “had” for that kind of percentage.

In the end, I’m not going to get my money back. As much joy as that robotic cat-bird thing brings me on the rare occasion that I wake it up (maybe once per year), it will never be worth what I paid for it. On eBay, Furbies just like mine sell for less than $10.

But you know what? I got over it.

My advice to those insistent on selling now is: just wait it out. Don’t move for the sake of moving — it’s as if it became trendy to move every few years and those are the people that are up in arms right now. Yeah, you made a bad move.

But now, change your ways. Stay put. It’s not worth loosing your shirt. Yeah, you paid too much and that’s too bad. Luckily, in time, your home will most definitely increase in value.

Now, I know some people out there are going to say that they’ve purchased a home for X amount of money and now it’s not worth anywhere near that — but they’re still saddled with a corresponding mortgage bill to the X price tag.

What about those people?

To them, I’d ask, “Who decided to purchase the house at X price? Who was it?”

Going back to the Furby, it was my choice, though unwise and poorly thought-out, to overpay for such a thing. And it was my choice alone.

Those people chose to purchase those homes. They signed the dotted line. Somewhere in the process, they must have thought, “Yeah, that’s a fair price. Let’s buy it.”

And they did. And who’s fault is that?

It’s not the government. And it’s not the mortgage company either.

Clearly, it’s the homeowner’s fault.

Seems I’ve meandered two rants into one Joe Biden style…

I think I’m done now.

Happy Sunday!

Posted on October 5th, 2008 at 10:43 am by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Mortgage, Rants, Retro | 2 Comments »

Game One in the Books

Well, last night I took in the first game of the season. The seats I picked out, sight unseen, for my season tickets are awesome. I’m very happy with the selection — though being right next to the student section and seeing many of them in shirts that said “Class of 2012″ made me feel very, very, very old…

It was the first NCAA women’s game I’d ever been to and I was pretty excited at the start, though, as it was my first game, everyone on the ice was essentially an anonymous nobody.

The size of crowd wasn’t all that great, respectable, but not that great. Probably because it was women’s game, which is kinda sad.

True, the hitting isn’t like it is in the men’s game, but the passing, well, the women set-up plays like the men used to in the 1980′s before all that mattered was the size of the player. It’s like a throwback to the best years of the NHL.

I should probably also mention that the home team, my “new” team, lost 7-0. Ouch. On opening night. Double ouch.

When I was young, I had a friend that was originally from Boston. The Red Sox were his team. He even had Red Sox curtains in his room and his gerbils were named “Dwight” and “Evans”. I’m pretty sure his brother’s middle name was even “Fisk”. Yeah, they were die hard.

I remember being at his house over the summer pretty regularly and his dad would seemingly always be on the couch watching the game, probably a Red Sox game, and his mom would shout from the kitchen, “Are we winning?” with genuine interest.

I always thought that was kind of silly.

See, at my house, if we happened to be watching a sporting event (a rare occasion), we’d say something like, “Are they winning?”

Notice the difference?

See, we didn’t have a team at my house. The whole concept of referring to the team as if we were actually a part of it was completely foreign to me. Dare I say, it almost seemed stupid?

Then, after University, I latched on to our local professional hockey team. I was even earning a paycheck from them. I mean, in that instance, I really was a part of the team — it would be understandable to refer to the team as if I was on it — yeah, we won tonight.

But for probably 10 seasons, that never happened. It was only this past season that I found myself saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna make the playoffs…” The funny part about it is that I wasn’t even on the team anymore but I felt more connected. Go figure?

Either way, I kinda liked it. Yeah, they’re “my” team.

So now, I’ve moved on to this new team and, as I said, last night was the first game.

Twenty three seconds in, “my” team was losing. Great start.

As the first period wore on, and my team fell deeper and deeper into a hole (the other team wiped the floor with them all night), I started to familiarize myself with the names on their backs, you know, to try to feel moreconnected to all of these anonymous nobodies so I could root for them.

I mean, I think the only reason I started calling the last team “mine” was because I was familiar with everyone on the team.

Everyone.

Not in a personal way, but in a sort of I-know-you-but-you-don’t-know-me sort of way. In my mind, we were on a first name basis. To non-sports fans, I’m sure that makes no sense. It may even sound creepy.

College sports, though, are tough to get behind if you’re not alumni because there is so much turn around on the rosters. At best, a player will only be there for four seasons.

On the men’s side of things, basketball specifically, you may only get one or two years out a player before they go pro, fail out, get expelled, or go to prison. What is it with these top level NCAA basketball programs? Seriously…

Anyway, it’s tough to make a connection when your favorite player could be gone next season. Every season. Just a rotating door of anonymous nobodies. What fun is that? There isn’t any connection to be made, other than to the logo on the front of the jersey…

That’s why I was happy to notice that the three players that stood out the most for me last night were all freshman — Jordan Elkins, Kate Wheeler, and Chelsea Illchuck — they gave it their all, down 7 goals, right to the final horn.

Injuries and interests aside, they’ll be on the team for another three years — maybe I can get into this…

Their next game is this afternoon, against the same team, so hopefully they fare a little better and I learn a few more player names.

Posted on October 4th, 2008 at 8:03 am by Brainy Smurf
Life, Retro, Sports | No Comments »

So Close, but Seemingly So Far Away…

It’s funny how the closer you get to things, the harder they are to actually grab…

I can see the prize. I can really see it.

But it seems like I’ve been right near becoming debt free for, well, it feels like six months now… It has been six months.

Back in March, my credit card debt hit zero. I was, like, here we go — I’m on my way!!!

All I had was the auto loan.

That should have taken me maybe two months to eliminate and then it would be all about savings, savings, savings — but then I got sidetracked and concentrated on the mortgage…

Next thing I knew, it wasn’t until late September that the auto loan would finally be paid off.

That took a lot longer than I’d expected.

I should be debt free now, right?

Well, no.

Again, I find myself carrying a little credit card debt — also due to my mortgage tangent.

At the start of this month, the balance was just $824.

No problem, right?

Well, then my season ticket purchase hit my daily expenses credit card… Boom — now we’re talking about a total balance of over $1300.

Throw in a few gas fill-ups and some monthly business expenses on the business card and, already, just two days into October, my credit card debt has ballooned to over $1500.

Then, next week, we’re taking a short vacation. While much of it is paid for already, I’m sure there will be at least another $500 or so in credit card charges…

And just like that, I’m in essentially the same place I was two months ago.

Treading water in the pool just out of distance from reaching the ladder to get out…

What makes the whole thing funny is that when I was still 5-figures in the hole and I’d splurge on a few hockey jerseys that would set me back a few hundred dollars, but it wasn’t really a big deal…

A $300 move in the wrong direction was so small in the grand scheme, it was such a tiny percentage after all, but now, well, a $300 swing into the red is devastating…

Weird how my perspective on things has changed…

Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:44 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Life | 1 Comment »